Bushman Letters/Bushman Literature Usable and Unusable Pasts

Abstract

             In remembrance of Michael Wessels

This article avers that just as Bleek and Lloyd's research on ‘Bushman voices’ has the potential to enrich South African literature so does Wessels's study, Bushman Letters: Interpreting |Xam Narrative. A meta-critical account of ‘Bushman Studies’, Wessels provokes discussion on what might constitute Bushman expression, where and when it arose, how it has travelled to us, and what it might mean. Is it ‘usable’? The question, in turn, raises contention about the translation of the oral voice, appropriation, and the reworking of texts. Is Bushman expression confined to a locality or has it a wider purchase? Wessels invokes a range of response from Propp's morphology of folktale to Derrida's metaphysics of presence.

My literary history, Southern African Literatures, begins with “Bushman (San) Songs and Stories”. In the light of this, I acknowledge Michael Wessels's contribution to literary studies.

Keywords:

• Wessels
• Bushman Letters
• Bleek and Lloyd
• oral voice
• folk tale
• history
• literature

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The ‘quarrel’ concerns the respective reworkings of Bushman material from the Bleek and Lloyd Collection by Watson (1991) and Krog (2004). See Watson on Krog (2005) and, in turn, Krog on Watson (2006). See also Note 5, below.

2 See Voss (1987) for changing images of ‘the Bushman’ in relation to changing sociopolitical circumstances in the nineteenth century and twentieth century. Voss focuses on South African writing in English. See Note 5, below, for an Afrikaans influence.

3 Neither the original publication of Bleek and Lloyd's Specimens of Bushman Folklore (1911) nor the reprint (1968) is readily available. Subsequent ‘ebook’ editions may be downloaded. I refer to the Library of Alexandria Edition (2001), which is available from Google Playbooks.

4 We may deduce Lloyd's sympathetic attitude to the Bushmen narrators from the tenor and tone of her report to the Parliament at the Cape of Good Hope. (See Lloyd 1889).

5 For the influence on Bushmen of Afrikaans (more accurately, Cape Dutch) see Von Wielligh (1919–21; 2009; 2010), Marais (1959 [1927]), and Krog (2004). Krog attributes an “Afrikaans substructure” to the narratives in the Bleek and Lloyd Collection because “Bleek and Lloyd had to make use of Cape Dutch as a means of communication with the |Xam” (2004: 9–10). For an extended consideration of the Afrikaans influence, see Van Vuuren (2016).

6 See Note 4, above.

7 ||Kabbo's words in Bregin's reworked version of Lloyd's account, in Chapman (2004: 30).

8 “‘A Story is like the Wind.’” (See Chapman 2004: 29–34).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Chapman

Michael Chapman is a researcher-in-residence at the Durban University of Technology. He is also an emeritus professor and fellow of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His publications include Southern African Literatures, Art Talk, Politics Talk, and Green in Black-and-White Times. He is the compiler and editor of The New Century of South African Poetry and The New Century of South African Short Stories.